2012 in review: The year in Mac

Some people have feared that Apple’s focus on mobile devices would leave the Mac gathering dust in a dark corner of 1 Infinite Loop, but 2012 has demonstrated that Apple’s longest-running product line isn’t out of steam yet. With some impressive product refreshes, a brand-new operating system for the second time in as many years, and the promise of more innovation to come, there has never been a better time to be a Mac user.

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Some people have feared that Apples focus on mobile devices would leave the Mac gathering dust in a dark corner of 1 Infinite Loop, but 2012 has demonstrated that Apples longest-running product line isnt out of steam yet. With some impressive product refreshes, a brand-new operating system for the second time in as many years, and the promise of more innovation to come, there has never been a better time to be a Mac user.

Mountain Lion roars onto the scene

Even for a company that prides itself on secrecy, Mountain Lion was an impressive coup: Nobody, not even the most dedicated Apple watchers, expected the company to announce a major system update less than a year after the last one. The pace of Mac OS X development has slowed in recent years as the software has matured, but Mountain Lion showed that OS X was alive and well, and was not just about moving iOS features to the Mac but intertwining the futures of Apples two software platforms.

Plenty of Apples iOS appsReminders, Notes, Game Center, and so onmade their way to OS X with Mountain Lion, but some features came to both the Mac OS and iOS at roughly the same time, including Mail VIPs, Do Not Disturb, and (eventually) Facebook integration, to name a few. iCloud also became an increasingly important part of Apples strategy, as the company enhanced the lackluster integration with its online service that had debuted in Lion, adding the ability to store documents in the cloud.

Although we didn't see much officially announced movement on the Mac App Store front in 2012, things kept chugging along, with more and more apps added and downloaded. Apple didn't dish on figures, either for Mac apps available or exactly how many had been downloaded since the company recorded the 100 millionth download last December.

Midyear, however, one particular changethe introduction of sandboxing to the Mac App Storereared its head. Even though Apple originally announced that it would force Mac apps in the store to comply with the sandboxing security requirement as of November 2011, that date was pushed back twice, first to March 2012 and then to its final June 1 date. While the sandboxing rule was met with some concern by many developers, its eventual arrival seemed to come with more of a whimper than a bang. (By the time youre reading this, we'll see whether a similar sentiment can be uttered about the supposed apocalypse.)

One other notable omission in 2012 was the appearance of any substantial update to iWork, Apple's productivity suite, a major new version of which last surfaced in 2009. Cupertino did release a patch to bring support for documents stored in iCloud alongside Mountain Lion's debut, but new features for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have been a long time coming. Perhaps 2013 will be the year.

The existing MacBook linethe 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air and the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Progot third-generation Core processors, better graphics, and USB 3.0, without any increased hit to the pocketbook. And the 17-inch MacBook Pro quietly slipped away into the darkness, never to be mentioned again.

But all eyes were really on Schillers next announcement: a brand-new, completely redesigned 15-inch MacBook Pro, highlighted by an enormous 2880-by-1800-pixel Retina display that Schiller pointed out was big enough to hold a 1080p HDTV image with room to spare. Despite our getting used to Retina displays on the iPhone and iPad, the MacBook Pro was a whole new storyand needless to say, it blew us away.

With the new Pro melding the design of a MacBook Air with the specs of a MacBook Pro, it seemed clear that this was the future of Apples portable line.

If there was any doubt about that, it was assuaged a few months later at Apples October media event, when Schiller rolled out the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Like its bigger sibling, the 13-inch model featured an entirely redesigned enclosure, complete with all the latest technologies. Though its 2560-by-1600-pixel screen is smaller than the 15-inch model's, it still has almost twice as many pixels as a 1080p HDTV does.

We got let in on a little secret, too: Apple doesnt usually break out sales information about individual models, but at this event Schiller said that the 13-inch MacBook Pro was its bestselling Mac.

Both the 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pros garnered positive reviews for their mix of portability and power. And, in traditional Apple fashion, they made the current MacBook Pro linestill being sold alongside themlook as antiquated as a vacuum-tube amp for an 8-track player.

(Desk)top of the pops

Apples MacBook line is undeniably more popular than its desktops these days, but that doesnt mean that the companys other Macs didnt earn some love this year.

In the same October event that saw Apple roll out the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the company also announced that it would update the Mac mini. While it sports the same aluminum unibody enclosure introduced in 2010, the 2012 model has a beefed-up Core processor, better graphics, and USB 3.0, putting it on a par with the updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines.

It also introduced a new type of storage offering, the Fusion Drive, which combines solid-state storage and hard drives into one fast, capacious system. The result for the mini was, as our lab director James Galbraith wrote, attractive bang for the buck. The Fusion Drive also got some praise of its own, as it registered performance approaching that of a pure SSD.

As with rest of Apples rethought lineup, the iMac lacks an optical drive, leaving legacy machines such as the old MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro the only bearers of that increasingly antiquated standard. However, the desktop doesnt yet have the Retina display that has been the hallmark of the companys laptop refreshnot too surprising, given the expense Apple will probably incur for producing high-resolution versions of those 21.5-inch and 27-inch displays. But if you think that a Retina display wont make it to the iMac eventually, well, wed be more than happy to take that bet.

And though you might be tempted to believe that the Mac Pro has faded into obscurity as the 17-inch MacBook Pro has, Apples tower desktop actually did get an upgrade in 2012if you can call it that. The revamped Mac Pros appeared at WWDC, though nary a word was said about them on stage; no surprise, that, given that the only improvements were processor bumps, including the introduction of a 12-core model. No new case enclosure, graphics card improvements, USB 3.0, or even Thunderbolt support here.

Put all of the above together, and theres a lot of steam behind the Mac going into 2013. The company moved more than 18 million Macs in 2012, setting Mac sales records for each respective quarter throughout the year.

More to the point, Apple continues to outpace its rivals in the computer marketplace by recording year-over-year growth in all four quarters as well. As Tim Cook is fond of pointing out, Apple has outgrown the PC industry every quarter for the past six years. And although the margins for growth have begun to slim in the past few quarters, the companys recent refreshes are sure to help bolster that going forward.

All in all, for a product that is rapidly approaching 30 years on the market, the Mac is still going strong, and 2013 promises to be no exception.